...Ballmer's argument is not in line with the path MS is taking with OS and application development. The only exception is with "XP Starter Edition". The next big thing is Longhorn, which will probably need a P4 with 512MB and 3GHz processor to run really nicely. I know hardware prices are coming down all the time, but will such machines really cost as little as $100 for a *complete system* of this kind by 2006?
Hardware margins are already quite low, and MS is not doing much to slow the increasing processor demands by its products. Ballmer's putting a lot of pressure on the hardware guys and not everyone can sell a PC at a loss like MS does with the XBOX. I say it's time for MS to meet PC makers half way and offer its OS to RETAIL customers at a significant discount--maybe under $50 for XP Home--and give it to PC makers at half that if they really believe in PCs for the masses.
Running an aplication without the use of an OS... uh-huh. Exactly *how* this application is supposed to run is beyond my imagination.
You don't have a very good imagination. All those early home computers could run programs without an OS. I could fire up my Atari 800, type in a program from Compute! magazine and save it on a tape and run it whenever I wanted. There was no OS. And before you go and say that the BASIC interpreter was the OS, keep in mind that you could type in an assembly listing using a program called "MLX", and that AtariWriter was written in assembly, and came in the form of a cartridge like a video game. No OS was required at all.
Same goes for TRS-80 Models I, II, II, CO-CO, etc, the Commodore PET, the Apple I, II, the original IBM PC. These machines may have had some sort of OS available but they could all run programs directly off tape, ROM or floppy as the apps themselves could contain all the service routines you needed.
I wouldn't store sensitive data on a public system, but I'd store the bulk of it on one as most stuff on my PC isn't all that sensitive. For the rest, I'd keep it on a USB drive, or burn it to a CD. No need for an OS for that either.
I see things returning to the days when the OS wasn't front and centre (back in the day, you'd at most have a rudimentary BIOS). For inexpensive "appliance" machines, the modern OS and BIOS will merge into a "super BIOS" where the BIOS becomes more capable and/or the OS diminishes in visibility. The XBOX is heading that way--you just plug in the game (app) you want and turn it on--no click "start->games->etc..." or windows to navigate, etc. There's a market for a PC like that, where you just plug in the word processor, or email, etc (or at most select it from a very simple menu). That would serve many people quite well.
It's comforting to know that his intentions are good--to make sure we simply get better software.
It's good to see that MS has removed the "crash" tags from IE's "feature list" and that tag soup will no longer kill it. It shows that MS is actually being serious when it says that it hasn't abandoned IE.
That said, I really hope Zalewski conducts a similar test involving scripting/DHTML/CSS. To this day I don't have to try hard to make IE barf on that stuff. In those cases the problem is even more insidious in IE--it doesn't crash much but it does mangle the document appearance. For example, IE makes things invisible when they should be visible onscreen, but they still behave like visible objects programmatically, etc. CSS is very strange in IE in particular...
The US implementation of e-voting technology is a nearly complete, abject failure, and instead of doing a critical analysis of the situation and learning from the mistakes made, they are conducting a ham-handed PR exercise. That choice, above the condescention and arrogance demonstrated in ther actions, is what has made the ITAA lose a lot of credibility in my opinion.
The reliability of the hardware and software is only a small part of the problem with the US election e-voting system. The most serious and disturbing headlines have nothing to do with reliability at all. Stories about terminals BSODing or hard drives crashing or systems freezing are not he big headline grabbers.
The problem is abysmally poor design/engineering practices. These systems have shoddy security. They are complex to set up. They produce no hardcopy backups or other means of verification. The data is typicaly stored in MS Access (!) database files, and the schema looks like it was designed by someone whos sum total of database design experience comes from reading "Access for Dummies". Add to that, the touch screen interface confounds those not comfortable with computer technology.
Other issues aren't even technology related. Development of the voting system was awarded to a company run by executives with partisan interests. The system architecture and source code was closed until some concerned people dragged them kicking and screaming into the open. There was an inadequate auditing process throughout the process as well.
The answer the ITAA has to this problem? Voters are either stupid or naive, thus journalists have to stop being sensationalist and along with others have to do their part to help educatate people on how to vote and run polling stations. WRONG WRONG WRONG. The solution is to get qualified people to develop the system, employ extensive usability tests and make the entire process completely open to public scrutiny and verification by non-partisan election authorities.
If you need to read a manual, article, pamphlet or other fine print in order to figure out how to vote then the system is a failure. India conducted an election using electronic voting machines without major issues, and a good deal of voters there are not even literate.
I hope there is a decisive winner in the US presidential election, because with the state of e-voting going into it, a close result will make the Florida recount look like an election for the local dog-catcher in comparison--guaranteed.
Firefox already renders most of the web properly, or at least effectively. Also, I've only ever had Firefox crash on ONE site (and none since upgrading to 0.9 and later), NOT one of every six that I visited. Slashdot now renders correctly. In all cases where there have been rendering problems it was attributed to broken HTML or IE-only plugins or other junk.
Anyways, ALL standards (not just W3C) are recommendations (there are no laws mandating conformance--otherwise they wouldn't be called standards--they would be REGULATIONS). And in my personal/freelance development work EVERYTHING I use is fully compliant (my personal home page for example, is fully/strictly compliant to XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2). So no, not EVERYONE uses non-standard tools and methods. If an ordinary joe like me can do it, everyone else on the net can too...no excuses.
My point is that Firefox need only render popular sites that are reasonably conformant. Who cares if some idiot's blog on Geocities can't render? More importantly, Firefox has to do it reliably and securely, and fail gracefully (not chrashing--rather it should show error messages or display as much as possible based on accurately following standards). By doing this and driving towards 10-20% market share and beyond, developers will be pressured into using standards, just like the rising market share of IE resulted in the stagnation and blight of IE-only plugins/BHOs, activex, etc.
This "random" test is dangerously incomplete.
on
IE Shines On Broken Code
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It mentions there is no scripting or stylesheets in this test--just random HTML tag soup. So yes, there was a very defined, arbirtrary range established. The results are disappointing for IE competitors for sure, but given IE is at major release SIX and at the end of its life cycle, while the likes of Thunderbird are for less mature (barely at 1.0 and at the early stages of its life cycle) I would expect and demand no less than perfection from IE.
Given the arbitrary limits on this test, it appears to be designed specifically to make IE look better than its competitors and prove some point rather than be an objective investigation. It is well known that the most serious problems in IE are with scripting and CSS support being unstable, broken or incomplete. A similar test should be conducted of IE should be done with these included. Kudos to the author of the bugtraq entry for doing this kind of testing, but I don't think the editorial commentary regarding the amount of testing of these browsers or their attention to security is warranted or productive.
The author freely admits he did not seriously analyse the source code for the root cause of these crashes (and in the case of IE, he cannot do so even if he wanted to--but that doesn't stop him from proclaiming it as superior quality). He also provides no evidence that these bugs compromise security in any way beyond consuming system resources, so it was not exactly appropriate to attack their security abilities without further study.
As to the jibe about lack of testing...Many of these alternatives are open source projects, not yet at official 1.0 release yet people! Being open source, the whole point of exposure is to get many eyes looking at the code, and get people involved in improving the code. He seems to know a great deal about programming so I suggest he volunteer some of his spare time to the Mozilla project to make things right, if he is indeed THAT concerned about the issue.
I'd say MS Windows is like...umm...Britney Spears!
Or maybe....Jessica Simpson!
Pretty looking but lacking in intelligence. Needs outside help with mentally complex tasks.
Wll, maybe Christina is more appropriate than Jessica. Jessica isn't trashy and promiscuous enough to have the same tendency to pick up viruses as Windows.
Calling UNIX "David Cassidy" doesn't seem right. I'm more inclined to think of it as the Rolling Stones. Still cool, sitll popular and nearly as old as Jesus.
...I just hope the font people have set in the status bar is legible enough to catch the trickier ones. Look at these three characters: "I" "l" "1". In some fonts they are identical (uppercase i, lowercase L and the number one).
Paypal was one of the earliest business victims of phishing scams, which were successful becasue of the unfortunate last character in the name. The scammers registered paypai.com (shown in the url as paypaI.com) and paypa1.com (number one at the end) and set up convincing, secure sites to scam people.
I applaud the Mozilla people for giving users the tools to help spot scams, but people still have to use their heads.
How about making the customers happy? Personally, I can't believe that 1 out of 5 CDs are sold in Walmarts.
Twenty percent does not a monopoly make (despite what the/. post implies), but I'm surprised the figure isn't higher. I'd venture to say more than half of CDs in Canada are sold by Walmart and its direct competitors (Zellers, which is not associated with but is almost a clone of the US chain Target--and Loblaws/Superstore, which is a national grocery chain that has electronic secions in its newer stores).
Interestingly enough, I've observed that music and DVD prices are 20 to 30% more expensive in the US than in Canada. I was talking to an employee in an American Best Buy store about that and he said he knew they were more expensive--he said the Canadian Future Shop stores (owned by the same company as Best Buy) set their retail prices to match the US stores--except that it is in Canadian dollars, which are worth 75 to 80% of US currency. Given the difference in retail price and the low markup I'd say RIAA has room to manoeuvre.
I can't stand their stores. I absolutely DREAD entering one. They aren't clean, they aren't friendly after you pass the greeter, and they aren't someplace that I want to shop for music as it's just usually a mess and full of people.
I think your problem with Walmart is local. That, or you fancy yourself too sophisticated for Walmart. The Walmart closest to me is sometimes tiresome to shop in due to its shear size, but the place is absolutely spotless and the staff, while they often have no clue about their merchandise except where you can find it, is always friendly. Maybe it the difference in culture and management as it is not a US located store. OTOH, I've been to Walmarts in Maine and Nevada and found they were not all that bad either.
Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
In this case the member corporations of RIAA are the sellers and Walmart itself is the customer. In regards to bulk sales it is RIAAs responsibility to make its biggest customer happy.
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
You really have never worked in retail or distribution because if you did you'd know that 33% markup is very low in the world outside the big box stores. Clothing is usually marked up 100% to 300%. Even most food is marked up much more than 33% (with the exception of common loss-leaders like milk and eggs). Smaller stores have to pay RIAA companies $12, then have to pay to ahve them shipped to each location, and have to pay rent, heat, electricity for their stores and have to pay the wage of the clerks. You have to sell a lot of CDs at $4 profit each to stay afloat. Recording companies, however, only have to lay out costs to record the album once--then they sell millions of copies at a 1000% markup.
RIAA has to cater to its biggest customers needs--it makes no business sense for them to say "screw you" and depend solely on 10,000 mom and pop shops--that would benefit nobody. I think its great that Walmart is using it's "monopoly" to drive down wholesale prices (counteracting what the likes of Microsoft and RIAA do). I certainly like this approach better than antitrust lawsuits, government regulation, etc. Unless a monopoly is abusing its power to the detriment of customers then the less lawyers, judges and politicians involved the better.
Either that or he is a comp[lete moron. $50,000? I mean, come on! Bill Gates paid that amount nearly a quarter century ago for a hobbyist's CP/M knock off when he was a snot nosed kid.
The least he could've done was adjust for inflation. Add to that the fact that Linux is much more sophisticated (and way more lines of code) and any fool can see the offer was a complete joke.
Assuming Merkey was serious about the offer, The BSD license would permit Merkey to sell a commercial OS based on the Linux kernel. Obviously, if he wanted to make a BSD based OS he wouldn't have had to spend money at all--cheap bastard that he is. Yes, you can build most any application from Linux in FreeBSD, but my guess is that he might have a preference for/more familiarity with the architecture of the Linux kernel, and wants to take advantage of the larger and sometimes more mature selection of drivers. Linux is the OSS market leader as well, and finding quality developers would be easier too.
...but I still fondly remember it. I was a loyal reader as a kid starting in the late 80s until the mid 90s.
In the pre-Wintel era in our house it forst gained attention for being among the last good sources of non-IBM/DOS information. They had a great "orphanage" section that enthusiasts of oddballs like TI99/4A and Coleco ADAM in particular enjoyed (they also covered machines like the Apple IIGS, Amiga and Atari ST, although the latter two were covered thorougly by European magazines well into the 90s). For loyal users of orphaned computers those handful of pages made it worth the bulk of the whole magazine.
When we finally retired the ADAM and the Atari ST and succumbed to the enticement of a 386 and Super VGA, besides the desire to have a machine that was compatible with those in our high school it was CS dropping the orphanage section that was one of the signs that we best move on when it comes to hardware for "real" use.
We were disappointed but as tinkerers my father and I got right into expansion/modification/assembly of PC hardware--especially when we started getting into Windows 3.0 and suddenly for the first time had the real desire for more power for the first time (We never needed to crack open the case of our old machines to expand them becasue they HAD to be to be useful--we bought a new one--the ST--when we wanted to do more things, and kept using the ADAM to do what it had been doing before: games, chequebook balancing, stock tracking...). The CS was a treasure trove of information for the hobbyist types looking for info on components and upgrading.
Unfortunately for the CS, times change. The Internet made the CS as it originally was obsolete, and in the process CS has become bland and just another PC magazine, with content that just doesn't stand out anymore. If any publication stands out anymore, its CPU magazine, because it retains the hobbyist/enthusiast atmosphere and features contributions from distinguished internet personalities. It seems to make CPU a good guide to help get more in depth online.
I've made the opposite observation. I find that in the move from GNOME 1.x to 2.x that it has actually become MORE focused on specific goals and has a definite "philosophy" behind it. GNOME developers spend a great deal of time on usability--conformance to a unified HIG for a seamless operating experience seems to get noticably more attention on GNOME/GTK apps than on KDE/Qt apps. And in terms of speed and resource usage, I think both KDE and GNOME have abandoned that goal to a large degree. Almost all players have--don't expect Longhorn to be snappy on your existing PC for example.
Those who knock spatial operation as a throwback to Windows 95 do not know fully what a spatial UI is, and don't know how to best use a spatial interface because they have never used one before (ie. they aren't long time Mac users--Windows 95 does NOT provide a spatial interface at all--it merely provides an "open folder in new window" option). If GNOME's detractors were to get past that and other changes to things they were used to they'd see that GNOME is the project that truly strives to be naturally usable. It took GNOME a long time to get there but KDE is still somewhat preoccupied with what computer people like (programming libraries, configurability, etc) and not what everyday users worry about (making files easy to find, menu selections and structures that make sense, consistency amongst application UIs...).
I do not have a study of thousands of users to compare, but in my limited experience beginners who have little to no experience with computers find a typical GNOME setup (2.4+ in particualr) to be more elegant than that of a typical KDE setup. It just feels like more thought has been put into the interface--a lot like how a mac works--all the designers of all the apps appear to have actually talked to one another. Apps like Konqueror, KOffice, Kopete, etc I feel are behind in capabilities and polish in comparison to GNOME counterparts (there is nothing like Evolution geared towards KDE--nothing nearly as advanced anyways, for example).
Unfortunately such a "forward thinking", ideological approach by GNOME means they dump familiar ways of doing things if they don't fit with the philosophy--even if things worked "good enough" or are done that way in Windows. The result is something foreign--even to old GNOME users at times. Thus, GNOME is more of a challenge to implement as a Microsoft migration project. Much of this has to do with the more rapid pace of change, but I expect things to settle down a bit eventually.
By contrast, KDE has no specific underlying goals in terms of the user interface, and its philospohy seems to consist of "make it like MS Windows" and "make it tweakable". KDE is NOT a dektop for Newbies--it is a desktop for those with EXPERIENCE IN MS WINDOWS. I find if you introduce Linux to a Windows "power user" then they are most impressed by KDE because it fits like an old glove (at least more so than GNOME). Implemented in the right way, KDE can be made frighteningly similar to Windows, and KDE has been consistent and "mature" for awhile, making it great for migration to Linux.
In the end it's a matter of personal preference and needs. Should KDE and GNOME compete until one is defeated would be just as tragic as if Apple stopped making Macs. Both projects should focus on simply making their products better than their last versions--they should not strive to kill each other. The argument that having these choices is not the best use of resources, but that argument is made on the flawed assumtion that there is one right way to solve every problem.
...as well as some harder-to-find systems like the Bally Retrocade System...
Wasn't the Bally system called ASTROcade? It's retro now, but at the time it was made I believe it was rather contemporary.
I'll have to have a look anyways. Any Colecovision/ADAM stuff in there? That system ROCKED! It was much easier to program than the Atari 2600 too since it had lots of video RAM and sprites, good sound etc...AND it had a real BIOS that had service routines for everything right down to playing background music--all you had to do was point registers to the start of the sound data, call an init routine, then call an update routine in the NMI interrupt handler and the BIOS routines would take care of the rest...literally only a handfull of assembly instructions (can't remember--6 or so?).
Others I'd like to see are the Vetrex and Magnavox Odyssey^2and some not ever sold in N.America like the original Famicom and the Sega SG-1000 and it's home computer cousin.
...of course, it isn't nearly as reliable as anti-virus software. Some indications of virus/worm/trojan/adware activity include (but aren't limited to):
* increased network and/or CPU activity and/or disk activity when the machine is idle and no apps are apparently open
* open regedit and look for odd entries in the registry--by far the most common place for malicious entries are in HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run and ~/RunServices
* look in admin tools->services to see if there are strange entries there.
* do a search for recent creation or modifcation dates...if you haven't installed anything lately and you have very new looking.exe,.dll, etc files then they could be suspect. Also look for binary/executable files with stupid or gibberish names like bhajjwkd.exe or pineapple.dll as they are most certainly bogus.
* if any registry keys, service names or file names are in doubt Google them.
Of course if you aren't that knowledgeable about Windows then you probably have no clue what is funny looking and what is normal because it all looks like gibberish (and when you think about it, a good deal of Windows normally is just gibberish).
I have little time for such goos chases and only go sleuthing if a machine behaves oddly. Therefore I use AVG to scan for viruses and run any Windows boxes on my home LAN behind the Linux firewall/NAT gateway.
Unless you are paranoid to do tasks like those above on a daily basis, you run a high risk of infection on a windows box. The most dangerous infections are the least visible to the user (keyloggers--they consume few resources on your PC and only register network activity when you type/actively using your pc).
The O2 sensors will tell the computer about the rich-burn condition, but the feedback loop is tuned to the burn rate of 87 octane fuel in most crs. I've found that this leads to the condition where the engine stabilises at slightly rich air/fuel mixture.
The suphurous smell is not related to the octane as you say. This an indirect result of a rich burn condition, where unburnt fuel becomes trapped in the catalytic converter and burns up slowly, producing carbon deposits. This slow burning process also produces the smelly sulphur compound in some cars--especially those made in the late 80s to easrly 90s. If the fuel/air misture is correct, the fuel combustion is in the cylinder, which is rapid instead of slow, and the sulphur does not emerge from the tailipe as the smelly compound formed in the slow reaction.
Lower octane fuels have a component that combusts at lower temps/pressures, in addition to burning a but less thorougly. This adds to the problem of deposits and pre-ignition/knocking, etc and is actually what will damage your engine. The deposits left by low-grade fuel bar a performance issue. However, in more recent autos that are tuned to premium fuel, they will work just fine on 87 octane with reduced performance.
I own a DOHC Neon and have been assured by a dealer source that 87 is minimum octane for my neon (and my engine does not knock at all on regular fuel--there are knock sensors and other safeguards to safely run at 87 octane), but I've also heard that the DOHC engine is tuned for best performance at 92 octane, so you could indeed notice the performance difference. I do not notice enough difference in everyday driving to justify spending near $1 per litre. That said, using premium fuel in the SOHC is a complete waste of money, unless you have an R/T Neon or have otherwise spent extra money for/on an engine tuned to use 92 octane.
In any case, NONE of this would cause unintended acceleration as some may have suggested, because the carbon deposits wouldn't interfere with throttle operation because the problems manifest themselves mostly in the exhaust--not at the throttle. Anyways, your car would not run well at all long before any deposits of any kind got so bad that your throttle would jam open. If anything causes throttles to jam open it would be buildup of rust, dirt and old grease in the throttle cable.
Microsoft has pretty much never won a battle against open source on this front. It has never exceeded 35 percent in market share and it seems stalled at about 20 percent with no signs of movement. It got where it is today by putting the smackdown on other proprietary systems (Netscape/iPlanet/Sun), with little or no switching from Linux and BSD.
It seems that any movement above the natural stable point in the low 20s is temporary. Every time IIS makes a big move in market share it only lasts a few months...then a "Code Red" sort of crisis scares people away and they never come back--even if there is a patch offered it seems that deploying the patch is too much trouble for hosting companies ans do they resort to bringing the old Suns back online or switching to Linux or BSD--becasue they never experience disruptions on the scale of those inflicting IIS.
Interestingly, this puts a hole in the MS-friendly argument that "people hate them because they are popular" making it the lead target of crackers. In terms of RATE of attack (percentage of total servers attacked--NOT absolute numbers), market leader Apache is NEVER attacked as much as distant also-ran IIS. If it was ONLY about crackers boasting of their skillz in bringing down big, popular sites, then Apache would be attacked far more often. Sad truth is...IIS is just that much easier to crack.
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
The whole point of the article is that an unelected regulatory body mande an unaccountable, arbitrary descision regarding a major budgetary issue (how to spend billions of dollars). The FCC overstepped its bounds considerably and is under BI-PARTISAN scrutiny. The program in question was spearheaded by Republicans and supported by both parties. The program was well underway before GW Bush was even President. As far as not being informed...do you expect congress and the President to be psychic? If they aren't informed about a programme that THEY approved, provided funds for and assumed was in operation was being suspended until it started receiving complaints from recipients what are they supposed to do?
Last I checked, the S in USA did not stand for "Soviet", so I highly doubt Bush personally or the White House oversaw the execution of this programme as if the country was run like a centrally planned authoritarian state. It is not the role of the President to guide the execution of every damn project the govenrmnet embarks upon--he makes the decisions and those below must run with them.
I don't hold Bush, congress, etc at fault for this...that falls squarely on the shoulders of a bumbling, unaccountable FCC. What I DO shame congress and the President for is inaction--ignoring the need for fundamental reforms and letting the telecoms industry fester in the status quo. I can only hpoe the FCC will be swiftly taken to task once and for all. However, this isn't a partisan issue--the Clinton administration was equally inept in this matter. There is little incentive for change, however, because of the large number of government representatives that are in the pockets of the original monopolies. And, given a tight election is looming, nothing is going to get done fast.
It is still common for people to think that the higher the octane rating fuel you put in your car, the more performance you get. Perhaps in older cars with mechanical/distributor ignition and carburetted engines this was true, because there was no computer, sensors and little in the way of control feedback loops so the behaviour of the engine was fairly constant. In the old days, car buffs would switch to premium fuel for awhile if their engine started knocking (lower grade fuels burn slower and could leave more carbon deposits in the cylinder--these deposits collect further unburnt fuel which ignites at the wrong time and causes the knocking sound).
Modern cars have no mechanical points or distributor and are fuel-injected. Ignition and fuel delivery are computer controlled, and the behaviour of the computer depends on quite a number of sensors for feedback signals such as manifold air pressure, exhaust oxygen sensors, throttle position, fuel pressure etc.
In these newer cars, the recommended octane rating isn't a minimum recommended rating, it is the ONLY recommended rating. Unless you have a high end car you are wasting your money on premium fuel. The computers are tuned to expect a fuel with the combustion characteristics of the recommended octane rating (87 in most cars) when it sets the correct air/fuel ratio.
Because higher octane fuel burns faster and more thorougly generally less fuel and more air works best, however there is no way the computer knows it is using permium fuel (there is no "octane rating" sensor that I know of). Consequently it continues to deliver more fuel and less air (burns richer than needed for premium fuel). The result is no added performance or fuel economy and increased carbon/particulates.
Prolonged use of high octane fuel in a vehicle designed for regular could have numerous effects...it MAY shorten the life of the O2 sensors, it will cause more carbon deposits in your exhaust, and could cause your catalytic converter to become plugged. In some cars, an early warning is a nasty rotten egg smell in the exhaust. Eventually, the deposits will bung things up so much that you'll have too much exhaust back pressure and a drastic loss of power--it's like driving around with a potato jammed in your tailpipe.
So, tell your friends with their tricked out Civics and Neons to save their money because premium won't help them at all. Unless of course they've already spent a pile of money on a new computer and/or firmware tuned to work with premium fuel.
Google is registering every word in the dictionary with the letter G prefixed! That must mean Google is part of some nefarious plan to achieve total world domination by its founders!
Where'd I put my tinfoil hat? I'm gonna need it to keep the "g"rays from scanning my brain and caching its contents in the grand "g"repository. It'll be a brave new "g"world...
The "Libre" is there to "thoroughly describe the movement in one acronym". This is becasue of the dual meaning of the word "free" in the English language. The French have two words that translate to "free": Libre and Gratis. The later refers to cost rather than freedom and "free-gratis" software such as Acrobat Reader, Yahoo Messenger or Bonzi Buddy have nothing to do with the movement.
I agree that the acronym is unfortunately rather stupid. "Remember kids to use FLOSS daily"...whatever...
Why post a story to Slashdot about your own product or service? That is what the millions of Slashdotters around the net are for. It's hard enough for one of us to get a story posted... now we have to compete with the source?
Amen brotha! Give me distorted third and fourth hand information any day. Slashdot is going to hell in a handbasket...now they're posting articles from the sources. What's next, original news content? Man I can barely tolerate original book and movie reviews. Perish the thought...
Either you were trying to be funny (I find the statement above in particular amusing), or you aren't in the journalism business. Generally, readers prefer information from "the source". I hate to break it to you, but a large part of "journalism" is driven by press releases. Over half of the content of typical magazines and newspapers is of the nature of this article.
I can also say you're not a struggling self-employed tech professional if you think Xamlon is going about it's promotion the wrong way. This guy managed to get column inches on two huge websites for next to nothing. I'd say they've made a promotional coup!
Yes, it is a shameless plug. However it seems to me that in marketing you have to check your pride at the door and plug away. At least this poster isn't like some others and included more than just links to his own site. Beyond that, regardless of the source of the information, it is a very intriguing development. A brash upstart was able to implement behemoth Microsoft's specs before Microsoft itself does? That sure takes the wind out of Longhorn's sales if you ask me. The possibility/likelyhood of it running on Linux/MONO floors me...that would be awesome! To think that it could technically be possible to make Longhorn-compatible apps that run on Linux before Longhorn is even released...amazing.
You DO bring up a very important question though:
Doesn't that open your company up for lawsuits?
What do the license agreements attached to Microsoft's specs say about this? I remember rumblings about not being able to implement them without Microsoft's blessing, or the possibility that MS has/plans to incumber the license to such specs with restrictions forbidding their use in GPL/LGPL implementations. OTOH, Mono is a GPL/LGPL implementation of a MS spec and they have not faced legal challenges. This could be because the CLR and C# have been submitted to standards organisations. If MS is trying to maintain good will in the community and wants to make XAML an official standard then they may not be able to prevent others from implementing their specs. Does anyone out hter know the real legal situation here?
...because if your Nissan is less than five years old, then it was engineered by the same team as the Renault that is the subject of the article. This is because Renault and Nissan practically merged some time ago. Renault is the single biggest shareholder in Nissan (about 40% owned), and Nissan owns 15 or 20% of Renault. from a corporate structure standpoint, their arrangement is almost identical to the Renault/American Motors alliance from 1978 to 1987 (American Motors Jeep division had to divest AM General--makers of the Humvee--because US regulations did not allow the vehicles to be supplied by a foreign company. Odd how "American" motors was considered a FOREIGN company by the federal gov't in the last decade of its existence).
If it weren't for Renault management Nissan would not be around today as they were nearly bankrupt when they formed their alliance. Whatever the rep for lack of quality Renault had, they learned from experience and became quite a well run company. And I wouldn't discount the possibility that Renault parts are being used more and more in Nissans (and vice versa of course...the two brands are even starting to visually resemble each other).
Back in the AMC/Renault days the same thing happened--a Renault diesel engine, instrument cluster and bucket seats turned up in a handful of Jeep models sold in North America. The AMC Alliance/Encore was mechanically identical to the Renault 9/11, except that AMC supplied different accessories (bumbers, grille, headlamps, wheels, radio...). AMC was also planning to bring the Espace to the US and Canada to compete with the Dodge Caravan (possibly to be assembled alongside the "AMC/Renault Premier" in Brampton, Ontario). Of course, that plan was quashed when Chrysler took over, but the Canada-built R25 was sold as Eagle Premier and Dodge Monaco.
The same thing is happening to Nissan, except Renault seems to have learned from its mistakes. This time it seems they are not only trimming the fat and get in effective management like they tried with AMC, they figured out that ultimately you cant stay in business seling junk. I KNOW some Renault engineering/styling is finding its way into Nissans, and they definitely source most if not all of their parts through common suppliers. Thankfully, for the most part Renault is learning from Nissan about quality control.
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...Ballmer's argument is not in line with the path MS is taking with OS and application development. The only exception is with "XP Starter Edition". The next big thing is Longhorn, which will probably need a P4 with 512MB and 3GHz processor to run really nicely. I know hardware prices are coming down all the time, but will such machines really cost as little as $100 for a *complete system* of this kind by 2006?
Hardware margins are already quite low, and MS is not doing much to slow the increasing processor demands by its products. Ballmer's putting a lot of pressure on the hardware guys and not everyone can sell a PC at a loss like MS does with the XBOX. I say it's time for MS to meet PC makers half way and offer its OS to RETAIL customers at a significant discount--maybe under $50 for XP Home--and give it to PC makers at half that if they really believe in PCs for the masses.
Running an aplication without the use of an OS ... uh-huh. Exactly *how* this application is supposed to run is beyond my imagination.
You don't have a very good imagination. All those early home computers could run programs without an OS. I could fire up my Atari 800, type in a program from Compute! magazine and save it on a tape and run it whenever I wanted. There was no OS. And before you go and say that the BASIC interpreter was the OS, keep in mind that you could type in an assembly listing using a program called "MLX", and that AtariWriter was written in assembly, and came in the form of a cartridge like a video game. No OS was required at all.
Same goes for TRS-80 Models I, II, II, CO-CO, etc, the Commodore PET, the Apple I, II, the original IBM PC. These machines may have had some sort of OS available but they could all run programs directly off tape, ROM or floppy as the apps themselves could contain all the service routines you needed.
I wouldn't store sensitive data on a public system, but I'd store the bulk of it on one as most stuff on my PC isn't all that sensitive. For the rest, I'd keep it on a USB drive, or burn it to a CD. No need for an OS for that either.
I see things returning to the days when the OS wasn't front and centre (back in the day, you'd at most have a rudimentary BIOS). For inexpensive "appliance" machines, the modern OS and BIOS will merge into a "super BIOS" where the BIOS becomes more capable and/or the OS diminishes in visibility. The XBOX is heading that way--you just plug in the game (app) you want and turn it on--no click "start->games->etc..." or windows to navigate, etc. There's a market for a PC like that, where you just plug in the word processor, or email, etc (or at most select it from a very simple menu). That would serve many people quite well.
It's comforting to know that his intentions are good--to make sure we simply get better software.
It's good to see that MS has removed the "crash" tags from IE's "feature list" and that tag soup will no longer kill it. It shows that MS is actually being serious when it says that it hasn't abandoned IE.
That said, I really hope Zalewski conducts a similar test involving scripting/DHTML/CSS. To this day I don't have to try hard to make IE barf on that stuff. In those cases the problem is even more insidious in IE--it doesn't crash much but it does mangle the document appearance. For example, IE makes things invisible when they should be visible onscreen, but they still behave like visible objects programmatically, etc. CSS is very strange in IE in particular...
...does use the same gecko engine, but it was written from scratch at a time that IE was already quite mature.
That said, there now seems to be a fire burning under the butts of team Mozilla, so expect things to be fixed rapidly.
The US implementation of e-voting technology is a nearly complete, abject failure, and instead of doing a critical analysis of the situation and learning from the mistakes made, they are conducting a ham-handed PR exercise. That choice, above the condescention and arrogance demonstrated in ther actions, is what has made the ITAA lose a lot of credibility in my opinion.
The reliability of the hardware and software is only a small part of the problem with the US election e-voting system. The most serious and disturbing headlines have nothing to do with reliability at all. Stories about terminals BSODing or hard drives crashing or systems freezing are not he big headline grabbers.
The problem is abysmally poor design/engineering practices. These systems have shoddy security. They are complex to set up. They produce no hardcopy backups or other means of verification. The data is typicaly stored in MS Access (!) database files, and the schema looks like it was designed by someone whos sum total of database design experience comes from reading "Access for Dummies". Add to that, the touch screen interface confounds those not comfortable with computer technology.
Other issues aren't even technology related. Development of the voting system was awarded to a company run by executives with partisan interests. The system architecture and source code was closed until some concerned people dragged them kicking and screaming into the open. There was an inadequate auditing process throughout the process as well.
The answer the ITAA has to this problem? Voters are either stupid or naive, thus journalists have to stop being sensationalist and along with others have to do their part to help educatate people on how to vote and run polling stations. WRONG WRONG WRONG. The solution is to get qualified people to develop the system, employ extensive usability tests and make the entire process completely open to public scrutiny and verification by non-partisan election authorities.
If you need to read a manual, article, pamphlet or other fine print in order to figure out how to vote then the system is a failure. India conducted an election using electronic voting machines without major issues, and a good deal of voters there are not even literate.
I hope there is a decisive winner in the US presidential election, because with the state of e-voting going into it, a close result will make the Florida recount look like an election for the local dog-catcher in comparison--guaranteed.
...and filed appropriately (flushhhhh)
Firefox already renders most of the web properly, or at least effectively. Also, I've only ever had Firefox crash on ONE site (and none since upgrading to 0.9 and later), NOT one of every six that I visited. Slashdot now renders correctly. In all cases where there have been rendering problems it was attributed to broken HTML or IE-only plugins or other junk.
Anyways, ALL standards (not just W3C) are recommendations (there are no laws mandating conformance--otherwise they wouldn't be called standards--they would be REGULATIONS). And in my personal/freelance development work EVERYTHING I use is fully compliant (my personal home page for example, is fully/strictly compliant to XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2). So no, not EVERYONE uses non-standard tools and methods. If an ordinary joe like me can do it, everyone else on the net can too...no excuses.
My point is that Firefox need only render popular sites that are reasonably conformant. Who cares if some idiot's blog on Geocities can't render? More importantly, Firefox has to do it reliably and securely, and fail gracefully (not chrashing--rather it should show error messages or display as much as possible based on accurately following standards). By doing this and driving towards 10-20% market share and beyond, developers will be pressured into using standards, just like the rising market share of IE resulted in the stagnation and blight of IE-only plugins/BHOs, activex, etc.
It mentions there is no scripting or stylesheets in this test--just random HTML tag soup. So yes, there was a very defined, arbirtrary range established. The results are disappointing for IE competitors for sure, but given IE is at major release SIX and at the end of its life cycle, while the likes of Thunderbird are for less mature (barely at 1.0 and at the early stages of its life cycle) I would expect and demand no less than perfection from IE.
Given the arbitrary limits on this test, it appears to be designed specifically to make IE look better than its competitors and prove some point rather than be an objective investigation. It is well known that the most serious problems in IE are with scripting and CSS support being unstable, broken or incomplete. A similar test should be conducted of IE should be done with these included. Kudos to the author of the bugtraq entry for doing this kind of testing, but I don't think the editorial commentary regarding the amount of testing of these browsers or their attention to security is warranted or productive.
The author freely admits he did not seriously analyse the source code for the root cause of these crashes (and in the case of IE, he cannot do so even if he wanted to--but that doesn't stop him from proclaiming it as superior quality). He also provides no evidence that these bugs compromise security in any way beyond consuming system resources, so it was not exactly appropriate to attack their security abilities without further study.
As to the jibe about lack of testing...Many of these alternatives are open source projects, not yet at official 1.0 release yet people! Being open source, the whole point of exposure is to get many eyes looking at the code, and get people involved in improving the code. He seems to know a great deal about programming so I suggest he volunteer some of his spare time to the Mozilla project to make things right, if he is indeed THAT concerned about the issue.
I'd say MS Windows is like...umm...Britney Spears!
Or maybe....Jessica Simpson!
Pretty looking but lacking in intelligence. Needs outside help with mentally complex tasks.
Wll, maybe Christina is more appropriate than Jessica. Jessica isn't trashy and promiscuous enough to have the same tendency to pick up viruses as Windows.
Calling UNIX "David Cassidy" doesn't seem right. I'm more inclined to think of it as the Rolling Stones. Still cool, sitll popular and nearly as old as Jesus.
BSD...of course... would be The Grateful Dead.
...I just hope the font people have set in the status bar is legible enough to catch the trickier ones. Look at these three characters: "I" "l" "1". In some fonts they are identical (uppercase i, lowercase L and the number one).
Paypal was one of the earliest business victims of phishing scams, which were successful becasue of the unfortunate last character in the name. The scammers registered paypai.com (shown in the url as paypaI.com) and paypa1.com (number one at the end) and set up convincing, secure sites to scam people.
I applaud the Mozilla people for giving users the tools to help spot scams, but people still have to use their heads.
How about making the customers happy? Personally, I can't believe that 1 out of 5 CDs are sold in Walmarts.
/. post implies), but I'm surprised the figure isn't higher. I'd venture to say more than half of CDs in Canada are sold by Walmart and its direct competitors (Zellers, which is not associated with but is almost a clone of the US chain Target--and Loblaws/Superstore, which is a national grocery chain that has electronic secions in its newer stores).
Twenty percent does not a monopoly make (despite what the
Interestingly enough, I've observed that music and DVD prices are 20 to 30% more expensive in the US than in Canada. I was talking to an employee in an American Best Buy store about that and he said he knew they were more expensive--he said the Canadian Future Shop stores (owned by the same company as Best Buy) set their retail prices to match the US stores--except that it is in Canadian dollars, which are worth 75 to 80% of US currency. Given the difference in retail price and the low markup I'd say RIAA has room to manoeuvre.
I can't stand their stores. I absolutely DREAD entering one. They aren't clean, they aren't friendly after you pass the greeter, and they aren't someplace that I want to shop for music as it's just usually a mess and full of people.
I think your problem with Walmart is local. That, or you fancy yourself too sophisticated for Walmart. The Walmart closest to me is sometimes tiresome to shop in due to its shear size, but the place is absolutely spotless and the staff, while they often have no clue about their merchandise except where you can find it, is always friendly. Maybe it the difference in culture and management as it is not a US located store. OTOH, I've been to Walmarts in Maine and Nevada and found they were not all that bad either.
Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
In this case the member corporations of RIAA are the sellers and Walmart itself is the customer. In regards to bulk sales it is RIAAs responsibility to make its biggest customer happy.
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
You really have never worked in retail or distribution because if you did you'd know that 33% markup is very low in the world outside the big box stores. Clothing is usually marked up 100% to 300%. Even most food is marked up much more than 33% (with the exception of common loss-leaders like milk and eggs). Smaller stores have to pay RIAA companies $12, then have to pay to ahve them shipped to each location, and have to pay rent, heat, electricity for their stores and have to pay the wage of the clerks. You have to sell a lot of CDs at $4 profit each to stay afloat. Recording companies, however, only have to lay out costs to record the album once--then they sell millions of copies at a 1000% markup.
RIAA has to cater to its biggest customers needs--it makes no business sense for them to say "screw you" and depend solely on 10,000 mom and pop shops--that would benefit nobody. I think its great that Walmart is using it's "monopoly" to drive down wholesale prices (counteracting what the likes of Microsoft and RIAA do). I certainly like this approach better than antitrust lawsuits, government regulation, etc. Unless a monopoly is abusing its power to the detriment of customers then the less lawyers, judges and politicians involved the better.
Either that or he is a comp[lete moron. $50,000? I mean, come on! Bill Gates paid that amount nearly a quarter century ago for a hobbyist's CP/M knock off when he was a snot nosed kid.
The least he could've done was adjust for inflation. Add to that the fact that Linux is much more sophisticated (and way more lines of code) and any fool can see the offer was a complete joke.
Assuming Merkey was serious about the offer, The BSD license would permit Merkey to sell a commercial OS based on the Linux kernel. Obviously, if he wanted to make a BSD based OS he wouldn't have had to spend money at all--cheap bastard that he is. Yes, you can build most any application from Linux in FreeBSD, but my guess is that he might have a preference for/more familiarity with the architecture of the Linux kernel, and wants to take advantage of the larger and sometimes more mature selection of drivers. Linux is the OSS market leader as well, and finding quality developers would be easier too.
...but I still fondly remember it. I was a loyal reader as a kid starting in the late 80s until the mid 90s.
In the pre-Wintel era in our house it forst gained attention for being among the last good sources of non-IBM/DOS information. They had a great "orphanage" section that enthusiasts of oddballs like TI99/4A and Coleco ADAM in particular enjoyed (they also covered machines like the Apple IIGS, Amiga and Atari ST, although the latter two were covered thorougly by European magazines well into the 90s). For loyal users of orphaned computers those handful of pages made it worth the bulk of the whole magazine.
When we finally retired the ADAM and the Atari ST and succumbed to the enticement of a 386 and Super VGA, besides the desire to have a machine that was compatible with those in our high school it was CS dropping the orphanage section that was one of the signs that we best move on when it comes to hardware for "real" use.
We were disappointed but as tinkerers my father and I got right into expansion/modification/assembly of PC hardware--especially when we started getting into Windows 3.0 and suddenly for the first time had the real desire for more power for the first time (We never needed to crack open the case of our old machines to expand them becasue they HAD to be to be useful--we bought a new one--the ST--when we wanted to do more things, and kept using the ADAM to do what it had been doing before: games, chequebook balancing, stock tracking...). The CS was a treasure trove of information for the hobbyist types looking for info on components and upgrading.
Unfortunately for the CS, times change. The Internet made the CS as it originally was obsolete, and in the process CS has become bland and just another PC magazine, with content that just doesn't stand out anymore. If any publication stands out anymore, its CPU magazine, because it retains the hobbyist/enthusiast atmosphere and features contributions from distinguished internet personalities. It seems to make CPU a good guide to help get more in depth online.
I've made the opposite observation. I find that in the move from GNOME 1.x to 2.x that it has actually become MORE focused on specific goals and has a definite "philosophy" behind it. GNOME developers spend a great deal of time on usability--conformance to a unified HIG for a seamless operating experience seems to get noticably more attention on GNOME/GTK apps than on KDE/Qt apps. And in terms of speed and resource usage, I think both KDE and GNOME have abandoned that goal to a large degree. Almost all players have--don't expect Longhorn to be snappy on your existing PC for example.
Those who knock spatial operation as a throwback to Windows 95 do not know fully what a spatial UI is, and don't know how to best use a spatial interface because they have never used one before (ie. they aren't long time Mac users--Windows 95 does NOT provide a spatial interface at all--it merely provides an "open folder in new window" option). If GNOME's detractors were to get past that and other changes to things they were used to they'd see that GNOME is the project that truly strives to be naturally usable. It took GNOME a long time to get there but KDE is still somewhat preoccupied with what computer people like (programming libraries, configurability, etc) and not what everyday users worry about (making files easy to find, menu selections and structures that make sense, consistency amongst application UIs...).
I do not have a study of thousands of users to compare, but in my limited experience beginners who have little to no experience with computers find a typical GNOME setup (2.4+ in particualr) to be more elegant than that of a typical KDE setup. It just feels like more thought has been put into the interface--a lot like how a mac works--all the designers of all the apps appear to have actually talked to one another. Apps like Konqueror, KOffice, Kopete, etc I feel are behind in capabilities and polish in comparison to GNOME counterparts (there is nothing like Evolution geared towards KDE--nothing nearly as advanced anyways, for example).
Unfortunately such a "forward thinking", ideological approach by GNOME means they dump familiar ways of doing things if they don't fit with the philosophy--even if things worked "good enough" or are done that way in Windows. The result is something foreign--even to old GNOME users at times. Thus, GNOME is more of a challenge to implement as a Microsoft migration project. Much of this has to do with the more rapid pace of change, but I expect things to settle down a bit eventually.
By contrast, KDE has no specific underlying goals in terms of the user interface, and its philospohy seems to consist of "make it like MS Windows" and "make it tweakable". KDE is NOT a dektop for Newbies--it is a desktop for those with EXPERIENCE IN MS WINDOWS. I find if you introduce Linux to a Windows "power user" then they are most impressed by KDE because it fits like an old glove (at least more so than GNOME). Implemented in the right way, KDE can be made frighteningly similar to Windows, and KDE has been consistent and "mature" for awhile, making it great for migration to Linux.
In the end it's a matter of personal preference and needs. Should KDE and GNOME compete until one is defeated would be just as tragic as if Apple stopped making Macs. Both projects should focus on simply making their products better than their last versions--they should not strive to kill each other. The argument that having these choices is not the best use of resources, but that argument is made on the flawed assumtion that there is one right way to solve every problem.
sounds like the end is nigh!
<sarcasm>Damn...first BSD and now the 8-bit uC? I don't know how I'll handle the loss</sarcasm>
...as well as some harder-to-find systems like the Bally Retrocade System...
Wasn't the Bally system called ASTROcade? It's retro now, but at the time it was made I believe it was rather contemporary.
I'll have to have a look anyways. Any Colecovision/ADAM stuff in there? That system ROCKED! It was much easier to program than the Atari 2600 too since it had lots of video RAM and sprites, good sound etc...AND it had a real BIOS that had service routines for everything right down to playing background music--all you had to do was point registers to the start of the sound data, call an init routine, then call an update routine in the NMI interrupt handler and the BIOS routines would take care of the rest...literally only a handfull of assembly instructions (can't remember--6 or so?).
Others I'd like to see are the Vetrex and Magnavox Odyssey^2and some not ever sold in N.America like the original Famicom and the Sega SG-1000 and it's home computer cousin.
...of course, it isn't nearly as reliable as anti-virus software. Some indications of virus/worm/trojan/adware activity include (but aren't limited to):
n and ~/RunServices
.exe, .dll, etc files then they could be suspect. Also look for binary/executable files with stupid or gibberish names like bhajjwkd.exe or pineapple.dll as they are most certainly bogus.
* increased network and/or CPU activity and/or disk activity when the machine is idle and no apps are apparently open
* open regedit and look for odd entries in the registry--by far the most common place for malicious entries are in HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Ru
* look in admin tools->services to see if there are strange entries there.
* do a search for recent creation or modifcation dates...if you haven't installed anything lately and you have very new looking
* if any registry keys, service names or file names are in doubt Google them.
Of course if you aren't that knowledgeable about Windows then you probably have no clue what is funny looking and what is normal because it all looks like gibberish (and when you think about it, a good deal of Windows normally is just gibberish).
I have little time for such goos chases and only go sleuthing if a machine behaves oddly. Therefore I use AVG to scan for viruses and run any Windows boxes on my home LAN behind the Linux firewall/NAT gateway.
Unless you are paranoid to do tasks like those above on a daily basis, you run a high risk of infection on a windows box. The most dangerous infections are the least visible to the user (keyloggers--they consume few resources on your PC and only register network activity when you type/actively using your pc).
The O2 sensors will tell the computer about the rich-burn condition, but the feedback loop is tuned to the burn rate of 87 octane fuel in most crs. I've found that this leads to the condition where the engine stabilises at slightly rich air/fuel mixture.
The suphurous smell is not related to the octane as you say. This an indirect result of a rich burn condition, where unburnt fuel becomes trapped in the catalytic converter and burns up slowly, producing carbon deposits. This slow burning process also produces the smelly sulphur compound in some cars--especially those made in the late 80s to easrly 90s. If the fuel/air misture is correct, the fuel combustion is in the cylinder, which is rapid instead of slow, and the sulphur does not emerge from the tailipe as the smelly compound formed in the slow reaction.
Lower octane fuels have a component that combusts at lower temps/pressures, in addition to burning a but less thorougly. This adds to the problem of deposits and pre-ignition/knocking, etc and is actually what will damage your engine. The deposits left by low-grade fuel bar a performance issue. However, in more recent autos that are tuned to premium fuel, they will work just fine on 87 octane with reduced performance.
I own a DOHC Neon and have been assured by a dealer source that 87 is minimum octane for my neon (and my engine does not knock at all on regular fuel--there are knock sensors and other safeguards to safely run at 87 octane), but I've also heard that the DOHC engine is tuned for best performance at 92 octane, so you could indeed notice the performance difference. I do not notice enough difference in everyday driving to justify spending near $1 per litre. That said, using premium fuel in the SOHC is a complete waste of money, unless you have an R/T Neon or have otherwise spent extra money for/on an engine tuned to use 92 octane.
In any case, NONE of this would cause unintended acceleration as some may have suggested, because the carbon deposits wouldn't interfere with throttle operation because the problems manifest themselves mostly in the exhaust--not at the throttle. Anyways, your car would not run well at all long before any deposits of any kind got so bad that your throttle would jam open. If anything causes throttles to jam open it would be buildup of rust, dirt and old grease in the throttle cable.
Microsoft has pretty much never won a battle against open source on this front. It has never exceeded 35 percent in market share and it seems stalled at about 20 percent with no signs of movement. It got where it is today by putting the smackdown on other proprietary systems (Netscape/iPlanet/Sun), with little or no switching from Linux and BSD.
It seems that any movement above the natural stable point in the low 20s is temporary. Every time IIS makes a big move in market share it only lasts a few months...then a "Code Red" sort of crisis scares people away and they never come back--even if there is a patch offered it seems that deploying the patch is too much trouble for hosting companies ans do they resort to bringing the old Suns back online or switching to Linux or BSD--becasue they never experience disruptions on the scale of those inflicting IIS.
Interestingly, this puts a hole in the MS-friendly argument that "people hate them because they are popular" making it the lead target of crackers. In terms of RATE of attack (percentage of total servers attacked--NOT absolute numbers), market leader Apache is NEVER attacked as much as distant also-ran IIS. If it was ONLY about crackers boasting of their skillz in bringing down big, popular sites, then Apache would be attacked far more often. Sad truth is...IIS is just that much easier to crack.
...try to use it once in awhile.
Bush may be an intellectual lightweight as far as US presidents go, but Bush can't be blamed for everything wrong with anything to do with the USA.
The whole point of the article is that an unelected regulatory body mande an unaccountable, arbitrary descision regarding a major budgetary issue (how to spend billions of dollars). The FCC overstepped its bounds considerably and is under BI-PARTISAN scrutiny. The program in question was spearheaded by Republicans and supported by both parties. The program was well underway before GW Bush was even President. As far as not being informed...do you expect congress and the President to be psychic? If they aren't informed about a programme that THEY approved, provided funds for and assumed was in operation was being suspended until it started receiving complaints from recipients what are they supposed to do?
Last I checked, the S in USA did not stand for "Soviet", so I highly doubt Bush personally or the White House oversaw the execution of this programme as if the country was run like a centrally planned authoritarian state. It is not the role of the President to guide the execution of every damn project the govenrmnet embarks upon--he makes the decisions and those below must run with them.
I don't hold Bush, congress, etc at fault for this...that falls squarely on the shoulders of a bumbling, unaccountable FCC. What I DO shame congress and the President for is inaction--ignoring the need for fundamental reforms and letting the telecoms industry fester in the status quo. I can only hpoe the FCC will be swiftly taken to task once and for all. However, this isn't a partisan issue--the Clinton administration was equally inept in this matter. There is little incentive for change, however, because of the large number of government representatives that are in the pockets of the original monopolies. And, given a tight election is looming, nothing is going to get done fast.
It is still common for people to think that the higher the octane rating fuel you put in your car, the more performance you get. Perhaps in older cars with mechanical/distributor ignition and carburetted engines this was true, because there was no computer, sensors and little in the way of control feedback loops so the behaviour of the engine was fairly constant. In the old days, car buffs would switch to premium fuel for awhile if their engine started knocking (lower grade fuels burn slower and could leave more carbon deposits in the cylinder--these deposits collect further unburnt fuel which ignites at the wrong time and causes the knocking sound).
Modern cars have no mechanical points or distributor and are fuel-injected. Ignition and fuel delivery are computer controlled, and the behaviour of the computer depends on quite a number of sensors for feedback signals such as manifold air pressure, exhaust oxygen sensors, throttle position, fuel pressure etc.
In these newer cars, the recommended octane rating isn't a minimum recommended rating, it is the ONLY recommended rating. Unless you have a high end car you are wasting your money on premium fuel. The computers are tuned to expect a fuel with the combustion characteristics of the recommended octane rating (87 in most cars) when it sets the correct air/fuel ratio.
Because higher octane fuel burns faster and more thorougly generally less fuel and more air works best, however there is no way the computer knows it is using permium fuel (there is no "octane rating" sensor that I know of). Consequently it continues to deliver more fuel and less air (burns richer than needed for premium fuel). The result is no added performance or fuel economy and increased carbon/particulates.
Prolonged use of high octane fuel in a vehicle designed for regular could have numerous effects...it MAY shorten the life of the O2 sensors, it will cause more carbon deposits in your exhaust, and could cause your catalytic converter to become plugged. In some cars, an early warning is a nasty rotten egg smell in the exhaust. Eventually, the deposits will bung things up so much that you'll have too much exhaust back pressure and a drastic loss of power--it's like driving around with a potato jammed in your tailpipe.
So, tell your friends with their tricked out Civics and Neons to save their money because premium won't help them at all. Unless of course they've already spent a pile of money on a new computer and/or firmware tuned to work with premium fuel.
Google is registering every word in the dictionary with the letter G prefixed! That must mean Google is part of some nefarious plan to achieve total world domination by its founders!
Where'd I put my tinfoil hat? I'm gonna need it to keep the "g"rays from scanning my brain and caching its contents in the grand "g"repository. It'll be a brave new "g"world...
The "Libre" is there to "thoroughly describe the movement in one acronym". This is becasue of the dual meaning of the word "free" in the English language. The French have two words that translate to "free": Libre and Gratis. The later refers to cost rather than freedom and "free-gratis" software such as Acrobat Reader, Yahoo Messenger or Bonzi Buddy have nothing to do with the movement.
I agree that the acronym is unfortunately rather stupid. "Remember kids to use FLOSS daily"...whatever...
I've wondered what the deal was with "the Piquepaille content filter" /. occasionally applies to article postings.
Roland's penchant for lifting text is legendary. It appears he has diversified and now rips-off graphics and layout from other popular sites as well.
I, for one, welcome our shameless plugging overlords..at least when they have something interesting to say like Xamlon.
Why post a story to Slashdot about your own product or service? That is what the millions of Slashdotters around the net are for. It's hard enough for one of us to get a story posted... now we have to compete with the source?
Amen brotha! Give me distorted third and fourth hand information any day. Slashdot is going to hell in a handbasket...now they're posting articles from the sources. What's next, original news content? Man I can barely tolerate original book and movie reviews. Perish the thought...
Either you were trying to be funny (I find the statement above in particular amusing), or you aren't in the journalism business. Generally, readers prefer information from "the source". I hate to break it to you, but a large part of "journalism" is driven by press releases. Over half of the content of typical magazines and newspapers is of the nature of this article.
I can also say you're not a struggling self-employed tech professional if you think Xamlon is going about it's promotion the wrong way. This guy managed to get column inches on two huge websites for next to nothing. I'd say they've made a promotional coup!
Yes, it is a shameless plug. However it seems to me that in marketing you have to check your pride at the door and plug away. At least this poster isn't like some others and included more than just links to his own site. Beyond that, regardless of the source of the information, it is a very intriguing development. A brash upstart was able to implement behemoth Microsoft's specs before Microsoft itself does? That sure takes the wind out of Longhorn's sales if you ask me. The possibility/likelyhood of it running on Linux/MONO floors me...that would be awesome! To think that it could technically be possible to make Longhorn-compatible apps that run on Linux before Longhorn is even released...amazing.
You DO bring up a very important question though:
Doesn't that open your company up for lawsuits?
What do the license agreements attached to Microsoft's specs say about this? I remember rumblings about not being able to implement them without Microsoft's blessing, or the possibility that MS has/plans to incumber the license to such specs with restrictions forbidding their use in GPL/LGPL implementations. OTOH, Mono is a GPL/LGPL implementation of a MS spec and they have not faced legal challenges. This could be because the CLR and C# have been submitted to standards organisations. If MS is trying to maintain good will in the community and wants to make XAML an official standard then they may not be able to prevent others from implementing their specs. Does anyone out hter know the real legal situation here?
...because if your Nissan is less than five years old, then it was engineered by the same team as the Renault that is the subject of the article. This is because Renault and Nissan practically merged some time ago. Renault is the single biggest shareholder in Nissan (about 40% owned), and Nissan owns 15 or 20% of Renault. from a corporate structure standpoint, their arrangement is almost identical to the Renault/American Motors alliance from 1978 to 1987 (American Motors Jeep division had to divest AM General--makers of the Humvee--because US regulations did not allow the vehicles to be supplied by a foreign company. Odd how "American" motors was considered a FOREIGN company by the federal gov't in the last decade of its existence).
If it weren't for Renault management Nissan would not be around today as they were nearly bankrupt when they formed their alliance. Whatever the rep for lack of quality Renault had, they learned from experience and became quite a well run company. And I wouldn't discount the possibility that Renault parts are being used more and more in Nissans (and vice versa of course...the two brands are even starting to visually resemble each other).
Back in the AMC/Renault days the same thing happened--a Renault diesel engine, instrument cluster and bucket seats turned up in a handful of Jeep models sold in North America. The AMC Alliance/Encore was mechanically identical to the Renault 9/11, except that AMC supplied different accessories (bumbers, grille, headlamps, wheels, radio...). AMC was also planning to bring the Espace to the US and Canada to compete with the Dodge Caravan (possibly to be assembled alongside the "AMC/Renault Premier" in Brampton, Ontario). Of course, that plan was quashed when Chrysler took over, but the Canada-built R25 was sold as Eagle Premier and Dodge Monaco.
The same thing is happening to Nissan, except Renault seems to have learned from its mistakes. This time it seems they are not only trimming the fat and get in effective management like they tried with AMC, they figured out that ultimately you cant stay in business seling junk. I KNOW some Renault engineering/styling is finding its way into Nissans, and they definitely source most if not all of their parts through common suppliers. Thankfully, for the most part Renault is learning from Nissan about quality control.